Friedrich Engels, International Articles from the “Volksstaat” (1871-75), Berlin, 1894.
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In the preface (January 3, 1894), Engels says, inter alia, that in all these articles (1871-75) he calls himself a Communist and not a Social-Democrat, for at that time the Proudhonists in France, and Lassalleans in Germany called themselves Social-Democrats (p. 6). |
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“For Marx and myself, therefore, it was quite impossible to choose such a loose expression to denote our special standpoint. Today things are different and the word[1] may be allowed to pass, however unsuitable it is for a party whose economic programme is not merely socialist, but directly communist, and whose ultimate political goal is to overcome the whole state and, therefore, demo- cracy as well. The names of actual [Engels’s italics] political parties, however, never fully correspond to them; the party develops, the name persists” (p. 7). |
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“The Bakuninists at Work” (1873). End.... “The Bakuninists in Spain have given us an in- comparable example how not [Engels’s italics] to make a revolution” (p. 33). |
Ibidem “A Polish Proclamation” (June 11, 1874).
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“Russian militarism lies at the back of all European militarism. Acting as a reserve on the side of France in the war of 1859, and on the side of Prussia in 1866 and 1870, the Russian army on each occasion enabled the foremost military power to defeat its enemies one at a time. Prussia, as the foremost military power of Europe, is a direct creation of Russia, although since then she has unpleasantly outgrown her protector” (p. 35). |
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...“Besides, after the Napoleonic wars, Russia took the lion’s share of the former Prussian and Austro-Polish provinces and openly came forward as the arbiter of Europe, a role she continued to play until 1853.... During the years of revolution, the suppression of Hungary by Russian troops was as decisive a development for Eastern and Central Europe as the June battles in Paris were for the West.... Russian domination in Europe ushered in the rule of reaction. The Crimean War freed the West and Austria from the insolence of the tsar.... We have seen above that the Russian army serves as the pretext for and mainstay of all European militarism.... It was only because the Russian army prevented Austria from siding with France in 1870 that Prussia was able to defeat France and consummate the Prusso-German military monarchy” (38)....
The talk about the “essentially aristocratic” character of the Polish movement is “silly”.
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“Much more than France, Poland, owing to her historical development and present position, is faced with the choice—to be revolutionary or to perish” (39).... |
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In 1871, most of the Poles (émigrés) were on the side of the Commune ... “was that the behaviour of aristocrats?” (39). |
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The Polish aristocracy sides more and more with Russia, in order to reunite Poland, even if under Russian rule; the revolutionary masses reply by offering an alliance with the German Workers’ Party and by fighting in the ranks of the International” (39).
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“A people cannot be free if it oppresses other people. The armed force it requires to suppress another people, is in the long run always turned against itself” (40)—as applied to Russia: the restoration of Poland “is a necessity ... for the Russians themselves” (N.B.) (40). |
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“On Social Relations in Russia” (1875).
...“The big bourgeoisie of Petersburg, Moscow, Odessa: which has developed with unheard-of rapidity during the last decade, chiefly due to the railways ... the entire Russian large-scale industry, which exists only thanks to ... protective tariffs,—have all these important and rapidly growing elements of the population no interest in the existence of the Russian state?” ... (p. 52) (against Tkachov).
A postscript (1894)—to the article “On Social Relations in Russia”—ends with this sentence:
“It [the revolution in Russia] will not only rescue the great mass of the nation, the peasants, from the isolation of their villages, which constitute their ‘mir’, their world, and lead them on to the big stage, where they will get to know the outside world and thereby themselves, their own position, and the means of salvation from their present state of want, but it will also give a new impetus and new, better conditions of struggle to the workers’ movement of the West, and hasten the victory of the modern industrial proletariat, without which present-day Russia cannot find her way, whether through the village commune or through capitalism, to a socialist transformation of society” (p. 72).
[1] Social-Democrat—Ed.
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